The night was magnificent, the moon brilliant, and the atmosphere so diaphanous, that objects might have been distinguished for a great distance on an open plain. The three adventurers did not leave their covert; but, on arriving at the skirt of the forest, they hid themselves in an almost inextricable thicket, and waited with that patience so characteristic of the wood rangers.
The silence which brooded over the desert was so intense that the slightest sounds were perceptible. A leaf falling on the water, a pebble detaching itself from the bank, the slow and continuous murmur of the water running over its gravel bed, the rustling of the owl's wing as it fluttered from branch to branch, were the only distinguishable sounds.
For several hours the three men remained motionless and watchful, eye and ear strained, with the finger on the trigger of the rifle, through fear of a surprise; but nothing had yet happened to corroborate the suspicions of Eagle-head, or the previsions of Belhumeur. Suddenly Louis felt the chief's arm resting gently on his shoulder, as he pointed to the river. The Frenchman rose on his knees and looked.
An almost imperceptible movement agitated the surface of the river, as if an alligator were floating along.
"Oh, oh!" Belhumeur muttered; "I fancy that is what we are expecting."
A black mass soon appeared, floating rather than swimming on the water, and noiselessly advancing toward the spot where the hunters were in ambush. At the end of a few moments, this body, whatever it might be, stopped, and the cry of the prairie dog was heard several times repeated.
At once the howl of the coyote broke forth forcibly so near the three men, that, spite of themselves, they shuddered, and a man hanging by the hands dropped down from an oak tree, scarcely three yards from the spot where they were.
This man wore the Mexican costume.
"Come, chief," he said in a low voice, though not venturing down to the river, "come, we are alone."
The man thus addressed emerged from the water, and clambered up the bank to join the person awaiting him.